This invention relates to an information processing device which is capable of indicating the performance thereof during execution of a vector instruction and a succession of scalar instructions.
In general, the performance of an information processing device of the type described can be evaluated by throughput represented by factors, such as floating point operations per second (FLOPS). The floating point operations per second can be obtained by calculating floating point operation elements per unit time, namely, a second. It is to be noted that an element number of the floating point operation elements to be calculated may be recognized as the number of scalar instructions or as the number of vector elements appearing on executing a single vector instruction.
In order to calculate such floating point operations per second, a conventional information processing device executes a program which has an operation measurement part intermediate leading and trailing instructions, each of which detects or reads instant of time.
On calculating the floating point operations per second, the operation measurement part is executed after a start time instant is detected by executing the leading instruction. After execution of the operation measurement part, an end time instant is detected by executing the trailing instruction. Subsequently, a time difference is calculated between the leading and the trailing instructions to attain an execution time taken to execute the operation measurement part of the program. On the other hand, calculation could be manually carried out concerning the total number of the floating point operation elements included in the operation measurement part. Under these circumstances, the floating point operations per second are calculated by dividing the total number of the floating point operation elements by the execution time of the operation measurement part.
However, it is not always easy to calculate the total number of the floating point operation elements in the operation measurement part. For example, an instruction analysis routine must be prepared to calculate the total number of the floating point operation elements included in the operation measurement part. Due to the necessity of such an instruction analysis routine, it is very difficult to indicate or visually display the floating point operations per second in a real time or on demand basis.